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Can Marco Rubio save the GOP on immigration?

“You know the media and the party — everyone is looking at this lifeboat with Marco written on the side of it and everyone wants to jump in,” said GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos. “We better be careful or we’re gonna sink it. We’re going to take one of our greatest assets and pigeonhole and typecast him. We need to move the conversation to the next generation, and he’s one of the people who understand that we have to be the party of hope.”…

“This is a very, very dangerous area for Rubio if he has national aspirations,” said Roy Beck, head of the anti-immigration group Numbers USA. “You’ve had Republicans trying to do this in the past that really lost their status in the party once they did it.”

Rubio also has a potential problem inside the Senate. Two of the top Senate Republicans — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas — are up for reelection in 2014 and have to be worried about a tea party primary challenge if they fire up the base on immigration.

In an interview with POLITICO last summer, Rubio made clear that he would like to move past immigration reform so that he can relay a broader message to the Latino community about his party. “If we could just get past that gateway issue of immigration policy and what it means about us as Republicans, I think we have a very compelling story to tell about how our economic policies are better for the Hispanic community than the Democrats’ economic policies,” he said.

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You mean the kind of immigration that’s illegal and costing workers millions of jobs and college students thousands on increased tuition and raising hospital operating costs by millions of dollars and clogging the justice system and being bussed to polling places while filling out registration forms on the way? You mean that immigration?

You mean the kind of immigration that’s illegal and costing workers millions of jobs and college students thousands on increased tuition and raising hospital operating costs by millions of dollars and clogging the justice system and being bussed to polling places while filling out registration forms on the way? You mean that immigration?

davidk on November 9, 2012 at 9:51 PM

You’re confusing two different things. We should have open borders for the free exchange of trade and labor; that’s a free market solution. Employers benefit, employees benefit, and consumers benefit. We should not, however, give citizenship and the benefits that come with it to anyone and everyone who crosses the border.

We didn’t win black voters with the Civil Rights Act – how do you think we can win Latinos with amnesty?

Until we learn how to speak convincingly to voters, there’s no sense changing positions, because we won’t get any credit. Did Romney get credit for passing Romneycare? Nope. He was still the greedy plutocrat who didn’t care about the poor.

You’re confusing two different things. We should have open borders for the free exchange of trade and labor; that’s a free market solution. Employers benefit, employees benefit, and consumers benefit. We should not, however, give citizenship and the benefits that come with it to anyone and everyone who crosses the border.

Dante on November 9, 2012 at 9:56 PM

No. We already have a process for the “free exchange” of labor. For decades, Mexican workers have entered, and left, the USoA mainly to harvest our crops.

As for “free exchange of labor.” How many Americans enter Mexico looking for jobs?

Even if you were correct in your understanding “free exchange of labor” does not address the myriad other problems of illegal immigration.

No. We already have a process for the “free exchange” of labor. For decades, Mexican workers have entered, and left, the USoA mainly to harvest our crops.

As for “free exchange of labor.” How many Americans enter Mexico looking for jobs?

Even if you were correct in your understanding “free exchange of labor” does not address the myriad other problems of illegal immigration.

davidk on November 9, 2012 at 10:18 PM

I am correct in my understanding of the free market. The number of Americans entering Mexico to look for a job is irrelevant. We can’t control who Mexico allows over her border. I would hope, though, that Mexico would embrace the free market for her sake and her citizens’ sake.

The process for the free exchange of labor is simply this: a person enters a voluntary relationship with the agent of a business and they exchange property/property rights. that is, the person exchanges his labor, skills, and knowledge for compensation. Both parties benefit. That is the free market. That is the process. There is nothing wrong with a worker from Mexico coming over here and working and then returning home. After all, many of our companies employ people in other countries, and the business profits, it increases its capital, which is then used to grow the company.

As I said, you are confusing two different things. We should have open borders to allow for the free exchange of goods and labor, but the attendant welfare state is an entirely different matter. Citizenship is one thing, coming over to work is another. The process you are speaking of is citizenship.

“You know the media and the party — everyone is looking at this lifeboat with Marco written on the side of it and everyone wants to jump in,” said GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos. “We better be careful or we’re gonna sink it. We’re going to take one of our greatest assets and pigeonhole and typecast him. We need to move the conversation to the next generation, and he’s one of the people who understand that we have to be the party of hope.”…

more importantly to the GOP is ridding itself of “political strategists” like Alex Castellanos.

These guys have been running the political show for decades. Time for some new people with clean records in the win-loss department.

Basically looking at the comments we will have illegal immigrants and the issue for the Democrats to continue to use a wedge for the foreseeable future in America.

We can’t round them up and throw them out, we can’t find some way to make them citizens if they pass certain hurdles, and they will just remain illegal and still vote in Democratic areas just like the other multiple voters, non-humans and dead people.

It reminds me of a World War 1 battle…political trench warfare. Just that we might be playing the part of the Germans…depressing.

If anyone thinks that amnesty will be the end of immigration as an issue they are nuts.
Immigration is a loser for Republicans because no mater how far we go the Democrats will go farther.
Unless of course we can find a way to get immigrants to vote Republican.
Then and only then will it cease to be an issue.

Two “Latinos” that the leaders of each party heap praise on, yet neither has a record of great accomplishments or a long history of fighting to advance a cause.

It’s just identity politics. If Rubio wants to be a player, let him play the game for a while- build a natural base of support by actually championing causes that matter to Republican voters. As it is, since he won the Senate by riding a wave of Tea Party support, he’s sided with the Left-colluding GOP elite. On every major battle since January 2011, he’s sided with the RINOs against the Tea Party.

Republicans need to make the case to voting Hispanics that: The more immigrants that are allowed to enter the more competition for their jobs there will be and the harder it will be to find one and the lower their wages will be. Marco Rubio could make that case.

Further, Republicans need to explain that democrats think that Hispanics are only good for picking strawberries and mowing lawns, when in fact, immigrants are very industrious people and will educate themselves if given the chance and will eventually affect all aspects of the labor market. Flooding the entire market with cheap labor will lower wages for everyone!!

Immediate amnesty for all illegals with NO voting privileges. (in fairness, Rush says 25 years. I say none) I think it is a genius proposal. Once again Rush shows why he sits atop the listener empire. This is a true compromise. Not the phony rhetoric which is basically “shut up you Republicans and compromise with us by giving us everything we want.”

I still regard this primarily as the latest round of a 175-year-old Mexican-American political controversy, with the Mexican elites acting as nationalistic as ever and the American elites too polite to object and hoping ten or twenty million illegals won’t notice.